I think this perspective is one that is a bit too privileged. Even in tech - many of us don’t have the ability to take 6+ month breaks between jobs, find ourselves again, and figure out a way to align the work/life balance. I spent a few months between my last job and my current.
You know what I did during that time almost completely? Interview. It’s why I left the other job - I didn’t have enough time to study and interview. 20+ interviews a week. Studying. Applying. Etc. Doing 3-4 onsites/week for a month at a time. Using my “off” days to study more. I took about a month off between accepting the final offer and starting the new job. It wasn’t enough but I had burned through a lot of my savings because of having to exercise options at my last company, pay AMT on exercising said options, and having to pay for another person who lived with me while living in one of the most expensive parts of the world cause all the jobs are here. (ex-wife who was in college and not working)
Again - feel like this is a very privileged attitude to take about being able to move onto the next thing. Most of us don’t really get an option. You just have to.
Getting to choose your job and when you move onto it seems like something only multi-millionaires I know do. The rest of us just slog through it because we have no other choice.